My M37 Airweight chambers and fires 38 S&W just fine (Victory question)

[walnutred]

Over the years I've owned a few Victorys which had been converted from 38 S&W to 38 Special by reaming the chambers. None that I owned and none that anyone I knew owned, bulged the cases enough for hard extraction let alone split cases. Unlike MOST of the 455 converted to 45 ACP guns I've owned. I personally owned a Victory in which three chambers would hold 38 S&W and three would not.

In the 1970's the Columbus PD cleaned out their ammo locker of all the 38 S&W they had picked up over the years. Probably because they had finally phased out their I frames. Some officers found their M10's would chamber 38 S&W and some would not.

My thought here is that normal production tolerances for 38 Special vary to the extant that some chambers are loose enough for 38 S&W. So maybe we're jumping the gun with the blanket warnings against firing the thousands of lend-lease converted revolvers which were imported 50 years ago.

Just a thought.

 

[m-1911]

I really find it hard to believe that factory tolerances would be so loose to allow 38 S&W to chamber in a 38 Special revolver

 

[Jim Watson]

Something you can believe.
There is some interchangeability at the tolerance limits.
A local store once did a good business selling ".38 Shorts" five or six at a time. I protested to the dealer that those .38 S&W would not chamber if the customer happened to have a .38 Special. Then he pulled a gun out of the showcase at random and demonstrated that they really would.

None of MY .38 Special or .357 Magnum revolvers will chamber the batch of WW .38 S&W ammunition I got for my .38 S&W revolver and derringer, but I have seen that some combinations will work.

 

[Alk8944]

Over the years I've owned a few Victorys which had been converted from 38 S&W to 38 Special by reaming the chambers. None that I owned and none that anyone I knew owned, bulged the cases enough for hard extraction let alone split cases. Unlike MOST of the 455 converted to 45 ACP guns I've owned. I personally owned a Victory in which three chambers would hold 38 S&W and three would not.

In the 1970's the Columbus PD cleaned out their ammo locker of all the 38 S&W they had picked up over the years. Probably because they had finally phased out their I frames. Some officers found their M10's would chamber 38 S&W and some would not.

My thought here is that normal production tolerances for 38 Special vary to the extant that some chambers are loose enough for 38 S&W. So maybe we're jumping the gun with the blanket warnings against firing the thousands of lend-lease converted revolvers which were imported 50 years ago.

Just a thought.

No question, you are correct.

I own a total of 20 .38 Spl and .357 Magnum revolvers, 19 S&W, 1 Brand X. As a result of other posts about just this, and outright curiosity, I have tried to chamber .38 S&W in all of them. The result was that the .38 S&W ammunition I have will chamber in at least 4 charge holes, and usually all, in 11 of 19 S&Ws and not in the Colt.

Based on this it should be obvious to anyone that some combinations will work quite often, and to make the statement that it will not/cannot work because nominal dimensions make it appear so, simply isn't the case and is a statement which would be made only by someone who has no direct knowledge of the matter.

 

[DCWilson]

Based on this it should be obvious to anyone that some combinations will work quite often, and to make the statement that it will not/cannot work because nominal dimensions make it appear so, simply isn't the case and is a statement which would be made only by someone who has no direct knowledge of the matter.

Which, until a few moments ago, would have been an accurate characterization of me. I am surprised to find that I can chamber .38 S&W in a few different .38 Special revolvers in my safe.

I didn't try chambering .38 S&W in all my .38 Special/.357s, which number about 15, but I found that I could load all chambers in my 1926 M&P, a couple of chambers in a 1946 Outdoorsman, and no chambers in a Colt Army Special (predecessor of the Official Police) from 1916.

Until I read this thread I had no idea that the older round could be chambered successfully in any .38 Special revolver. So I learned something, which makes this a good day.

 

[hiram2005]

I have found this true also in regards to K-frames i have had. 3or 4 chambers would take the S+W rounds.

However several model 36's I had would chamber all 5.

 

[walnutred]

"Combinations" may be the key. The initial 38 S&W rounds I tested were from a fresh batch of Remingtons I purchased this year. Digging through my stash I found 38 S&W factory ammo with head stamps marked: W-W, Winchester, Western, Peters, FN and the aforementioned Remington. This probably represents probably 50 years of 38 S&W ammo manufacturing.

The Remington fit in both my 37 and 10-6. The FN and W-W would fit in neither the 37 or 10-6. Peters fit in all of the 37 and half of the 10-6. The rest would not fully seat in any charge hole. So based on this non-scientific test I suggest it's also ammo manufacturing tolerances and/or specs that help determine the final results.

Roy Dunlap wrote of seeing desperate British soldiers use captured 9x19 in their S&W Victorys when 38/200 ammo was unavailable. 9x19 has chambered in the LL Victorys I've owned, but I've never been "desperate" enough to try firing them with that ammo.

Out of curiosity I tried cambering Winchester factory 9x19 in my 38 Safety Hammerless. The ammo seemed to fit well enough that I expect the revolver would fire the 9x19, at least once that is.

I think the image of a 3rd Model 38 Safety Hammerless being fired with factory 9x19 is a very good example of "Just because the ammo fits does not mean it's the correct ammo".

 

[KEN L]

I had a similar situation once with a Japanese Type 26 revolver. They are supposed to be chambered for a proprietary 9mm revolver round that supposedly won't chamber anything but. The one I had chambered and fired .38 S&W ammo as if it was made for it. There was no evidence of modifications to the revolver. Now if you want to talk about a wide desparity in dimensions, Japanese handguns of late WWII would be the definitive answer.

 

[Texas Star]

I had a M-19 that would chamber fired .38-200 cases, shot in a .38-200 revolver.The 38 S&W ammo was Remington, I believe, with nickled cases.

I wrote to Speer about it in the 1970's, and they confirmed that they were seeing the same thing, which led to some sticky extraction of fired .357 ammo in guns with such large chambers.

I don't know what the pressure would be for a .38 S&W bullet in a tighter .357"-.358" bore. I firmly believe that S&W supplied some .38 Special spec barrels on .38-200 guns, and these are the reason why the guns got a bad rep for bullets sticking in the barrel. This did not seem to happen with Enfield or Webley .38's and the same ammo.

Speer told me that Colt was using considerably higher quality control in the '70's, and they said that their Colt test guns gave much less extraction trouble than did similar S&W models. We didn't discuss Ruger chamber dimensions, but I am not aware of any difficulty with Ruger in that regard.

A famous gun writer at one of the leading outdoor magazines confirmed that S&W QC left something to be desired at that time, during the Bangor-Punta years. From the above posts, it seems that S&W played fast and loose with chamber dimensions for a long time before that, too.

It is obvious that, within certain ranges, loose chamber tolerances work out well enough in most cases. That's in .38 Special. If the chambers are too large in .357 guns, extraction problems are more likely.

T-Star

 

[m-1911]

I had a similar situation once with a Japanese Type 26 revolver. They are supposed to be chambered for a proprietary 9mm revolver round that supposedly won't chamber anything but. The one I had chambered and fired .38 S&W ammo as if it was made for it. There was no evidence of modifications to the revolver. Now if you want to talk about a wide desparity in dimensions, Japanese handguns of late WWII would be the definitive answer.

I have a type 26 revolver and I tried to chamber 38 S&W's in it and they almost chamber in it. The shoulders in the charge holes stop the cartridge from chambering all the way. But it would not take much to allow it to chamber

 

[walnutred]

I have a type 26 revolver and I tried to chamber 38 S&W's in it and they almost chamber in it. The shoulders in the charge holes stop the cartridge from chambering all the way. But it would not take much to allow it to chamber

Do you mean the case mouth is not letting the the cartridge slide into the chamber all the way? If so it sounds like it would be easy to trim down some brass and reload using 38 Super or 38 S&W dies. Might even be able to make 9x19 dies work, which are cheap on the used market.